


Into the Ash Wastes

by nostalgic_breton_girl



Category: Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-03
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-15 04:33:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29183340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nostalgic_breton_girl/pseuds/nostalgic_breton_girl
Summary: Lunette hires a Legionnaire to lead her into the Ashlands, in search of the Urshilaku camp -- and uncertain destiny.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 4





	1. Ondi

It had not stopped raining by the time Lunette arrived in Khuul, and she feared she would be rather the sight – looking like a wet fish – a fear which was allayed rather by the sight of the townspeople, who despite their precautions looked equally drenched. Those people who were wandering outside had gravitated a little towards the silt strider port, to inspect the visitor: then, satisfied on seeing that she was just as miserable as them, they went back to whatever there was to do, in this village on the edge of the world. 

Lunette caught one of them and asked about Ondi; found that the villagers had a lazy roundabout way of talking; eventually learnt that the town’s only semblance of a blade for hire was probably in its only semblance of a public building, the quite distinctly sandstone tradehouse which dominated Khuul’s shambolic huts. –  _ Thongar has goods for sale _ , they said,  _ and maybe beds for the night, if you really feel like staying; I saw Ondi in there the other day; bloody Legion going where they’re not wanted; Ondi’s a Nord though, it could be worse.  _

_ It could be worse _ , Lunette repeated, and – sensing the rain becoming merciless – ran for cover in the tradehouse.

She had been almost disappointed not to have seen Solstheim, far off across the sea: it would have been bittersweet memory, a foothold. Instead, isolated at the edge of the world, she had seen nothing except banking rainclouds, an almost absent horizon. The people of Khuul had no more appreciation for their position than she did. There were already two day-drinkers in the tradehouse, in muddy fishing-waders; and the proprietor had fallen asleep at his table. 

She would have addressed this proprietor, if he had been awake; but decided against it, and anyway she had already worked out who her woman was. There was in the corner a Nord in flamboyantly Imperial armour, who looked up when Lunette walked in, and who at once caught the latter’s attention. 

‘Ondi?’ said Lunette.

‘At your service, ma’am,’ she replied.

‘Save your titles for those who demand it,’ said Lunette: ‘my name’s Lunette. I heard you were a blade for hire – ?’

‘Then you heard right, ma’am.’ A consternation. ‘Lunette.’

‘I’m looking to get to the Urshilaku camp. Tomorrow, probably. I don’t know my way about the Ashlands but General Darius said you were pretty capable out there.’

It was no significant flattery, but it was enough, and Ondi had to keep her eyes from shining. ‘Yes, ma’am – Lunette. I’ve been to the Ashlands often. It’s dangerous around the camp, there’s a Daedric ruin nearby, you know?’

‘I have been told that, yes.’

They looked each other up and down – Ondi with all her brute Nordic strength, and a particularly large axe; Lunette, in leathers that hardly fitted her, and a dagger with strips coming off the handle. Ondi did not want to say so, but she felt she sufficed for the both of them, and a good job too. 

‘You set off tomorrow, then? – I shall gather some things. – I trust you have brought provisions enough for yourself?’ At which Lunette nodded. ‘Good. Thongar might have a bed you can have. And I’ll be with you tomorrow, early.’


	2. Interlude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Solstheim is somewhere over the horizon... Lunette spent a year doing hard labour at Raven Rock, and now that she is involved in things quite beyond her comprehension, she wishes for the simplicity of that year.

Khuul was not quite the edge of the world, on sunny days. Solstheim lay somewhere over the horizon: rose up above it, sometimes, if one was to believe the shipmaster. – And he should know: when the weather was as fine as it would ever be, and when somebody was possessed by such madness that they wanted to go over to Frostmoth, he emerged from his hut and carted them across the sea. 

‘A fine sea to conquer,’ he said: ‘but I wouldn’t risk it when it’s like this…’

‘Shame,’ said Lunette, who had all the desire but none of the time to make the journey.

All of the desire…

She had been imprisoned on Solstheim: why did she still dream of it? 

Dreamt of it, by night; and thought on it by day, that inaccessible, ineffable horizon. It was a shame she could not see it. But despite that she stood on the cliffs for a good while, looking out to sea, as the rain slipped under her collar, over her shivering fingers, glimmered upon her eyelashes: could see it, in memory, the grey rise of it, the fort, Raven Rock at last, in the snowy arch of the bay…

Things had been simpler, in Raven Rock…

She’d known who she was back then, what she was doing: the same thing, day-in, day-out. Oh! it had been hard labour, certainly: but there was an ease to the repetition of it, to being so firmly entrenched. The simplicity of it all had been a reassurance: and now it was beyond the horizon, in hazy cloud. 

Solstheim was neither a good memory, nor a bad one. And there had been nights when she’d found something extraordinary – outside, when the aurora cascaded – and within – 

Tonight was dull and grey and the rain would not stop, and the thought of Ondi in the tradehouse in her Imperial insignia, with her ‘ma’am’s and her stiff salute and her Bruma accent suppressed, only made her feel more alone than ever. 

‘Things not going so well?’ the shipmaster said at last.

He’d been finishing the last of his damp knots, and pulled his horker-hood further down his brow; looked at her quite pitifully, as she let the rain drench her, as the leathers darkened. The shipmaster, who would set out for Solstheim in his boat, some day soon; who had that liberty, to venture into the abyssal sea, and to call himself  _ shipmaster _ , and to live so simply here at the edge of the world.

‘They could be better,’ said Lunette, and wringing out her sleeves made a slow aim back to the tradehouse.


	3. Bandit Territory

‘If we want to get there within daylight hours,’ said Ondi the next morning, before the aforementioned daylight hours had even arrived: ‘then we shall have to set off soon.’

Lunette had not been trained in the Legion, and so the time she took to dress herself and get her things displeased her companion, who nevertheless said nothing. Breakfast was edge-of-the-world fare, the scraps which Thongar had managed to procure; and when they left the place, the sun was only just illuminating the far horizon, their horizon. Solstheim was once again lost in the mist.

‘Thank the Divines it’s stopped raining, eh, Lunette?’ said Ondi.

And Lunette, whose clothes had dried only irregularly by the tradehouse hearth, shrugged and set off walking.

The young Nord soldier might have been timid, subservient the previous day: but spurred on by Lunette’s informality, and perhaps persuaded by her silence, she became today quite the remarkable conversationalist. Skirted around personal business – Lunette had said that ‘you do not need to know my business’, and Ondi had understood that very well – but talked about the weather and the Ashlands and life in the Legion and in Khuul, and asked about ‘Ascadia away southwards’. – ‘I came in by Seyda Neen too,’ she said: ‘and got the strider up to Gnisis, they’re remarkable, aren’t they, these silt striders? – Nothing like it back in Cyrodiil.’

‘There is little difference between that and a stagecoach,’ said Lunette, ‘if you don’t care to look over the side.’

‘We don’t have anything like this in Cyrodiil either,’ Ondi said at length, and spreading her arm indicated the vast expanse of nothing which lay ahead of them.

It was green enough, in the land around Khuul: would become much different, by all accounts, after the foyada. The Ashlands were the bitterest reminder of what Vvardenfell had been, might become: Lunette had already glimpsed their foothills, in Ald’ruhn, had been warned not to venture beyond the city walls without a good guide and a better optimism. Well, now she had a good guide, at the least. 

There were wild creatures in Cyrodiil, and bandits, and one would do better not to stray from the many beaten tracks. But in Cyrodiil, the very country was not out to get you. And that – Ondi emphasised, more enthusiastically than was fitting – was the difference. 

Ondi was excited by the thought of fighting something, of emerging victorious against this land, this landscape: and so, when she perceived something rising on the edge of their view, she hauled her axe into her hands and strode forth. Bade Lunette to stay behind her: but Lunette, who had seen in this distant vision the form of a tent, could not help investigating. 

‘Bandits, I’d say,’ said Ondi: ‘there are a few about. Some of them Ashlanders, some of them smugglers, Khuul’s that kind of a town.’

When they had got close enough to investigate, they found a smouldering fire, and a single figure with his back to them. He had not seen them, and Lunette on her own might have left well alone, crept away. But that was not enough for her bloodthirsty Legionnaire, who sprang forth and yelled something like ‘State your intentions, sir.’

Certainly she startled the man: his first instinct was to draw his own sword, swing round yelling. Ondi’s armour did not help matters. Perhaps he was a smuggler, or some other criminal: he had a lot to lose in yielding, little in dying. And so he chose the latter, and ran shrieking at Ondi, who already had her axe above her head – Lunette froze, saw, in her mind’s eye, the axe come crashing down, saw him perish, and horribly – 

It was cowardice or madness or the purest empathy which pushed her forwards, which let her catch the man before he might reach Ondi, and in a swift decisive movement tackle him to the floor. 

Ondi’s axe tumbled gracelessly; Lunette let out a breath, put her dagger to the man’s throat, had all the suggestion and none of the intention to kill him. He shuddered beneath her: and she was satisfied by his helplessness, demanded a surrender from him, a surrender which he stuttered out. And Ondi made to grab him – arrest him, out here? – but Lunette stayed her hand, said:

‘You are under my service. You will unhand this man. He will go free, on the condition that he not attack us.’

‘Are you sure, ma’am – Lunette?’

‘Perfectly sure.’ The man shifted a little: Lunette put out her dagger, he took a hasty step backwards. ‘Let’s continue. We don’t have time for this.’

The bandit was not far behind when Ondi began to question Lunette’s decision, and her integrity: Lunette cast aside this interrogation, in the assumption that she was the one in charge here. At which Ondi reminded her that she was not just a mercenary, she was a guard, and that she had every right to uphold the Imperial law, if she saw fit. 

‘You didn’t, with that bandit,’ Lunette remarked.

‘No, I didn’t.’

They turned, as if the man might still be watching them: Lunette glanced at Ondi, wondered if the woman was warming to her a little. 

‘Is that the worst we shall face?’ she said, after a moment.

‘We can but hope,’ said Ondi, who – sword still drawn, soldier’s itch not yet sated – did not really look as if she hoped; but who pretended anyway, for Lunette’s sake. 


End file.
